Terrible Beauty
by Merina 2
Summary: Fiyero lays eyes on Elphaba for the first time in two years and just manages to find words to describe her. Drabble, Fiyeraba, musicalverse. Third place winner of the '2011 Fourth Annual Wicked Fanfiction Awards' in Best Drabble/Oneshot!


**I've grown very fond of this brief bit of musicalverse drabble, but never quite knew how to fit it into my current Wicked fanfiction. So I thought I'd publish it now, as a separate piece of random drabble, just so it got a bit of credit of its own, as I am kinda pleased with how it turned out. And yes, it is cheesy :D **

**Act two, just after Wonderful.**

* * *

_Guards! Guards…!_

His feet pound hard and fast against the marble floor as he stumbles, gun in hand, into the Wizard's chamber, fellow soldiers close at his heels, gazing wildly around for the source of the danger he and his retinue all suppose has caused the Wizard to call for them so suddenly. But the room is empty, bare – each tall, snowy-marble pillar hiding nothing from sight, each smooth creamy tile as bare and shiningly polished as ever, enough so that he could almost see his face in them, not a trace of danger in any direction he frantically glances in, except…

…except…

…_except…_

Standing by the Wizard's huge, shining gold-plated head, with an old battered broomstick that looked uncannily like it had flown through just a few too many violent storms clutched tightly to her chest…

...was Elphaba.

Elphaba.

_Elphaba._

The whole world, the whole universe – the whole existence of anything and everything else, seemed to freeze around Fiyero. He couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't do or think anything, anything…

Anything but the woman crouched almost to the ground in front of him, as frozen with shock as he was.

She was more beautiful…and more terrible, than he'd ever imagined she could ever be. So utterly, entirely different from the plain, awkward, gangling Elphaba Thropp he'd once known as a fellow student at Shiz university - a million years ago, now, that time seemed - and yet so much the same.

She had grown so much, _so _much, her hair most prominently, which now resembled long, twisted, wild midnight tangles cascading out from under the famous black pointed hat she wore perched on her head; flowing and rippling over her shoulders and down her back, a waterfall of molten dark chocolate coiling into soft waves at her waist.

She was taller, too, by far, and had adopted an new, odd, defiant, imposing stance; bony shoulders thrown back, thin face uplifted, angular body bent in a half-crouch with her broomstick thrust protectively in front of her. Like a cat waiting to strike; only the green of this woman was not of her eyes, but her skin, which semed to glow through the dim light of the room, brighter and more beautiful and more mysterious than any emerald in this pathetic attempt of an _emerald_ city ever, ever could.

He could hardly believe that he'd once thought of her skin as ugly - and he had, it was true, those first few months at Shiz. But now...how could anything so unique, so ethereal, so captivating, and so electrifying to touch, ever be _anything_ like ugly…?

She was dressed, impossibly, in what was now a poorly fixed-up and hardly recognizable version of the exact same dress she had left Shiz in, all those years ago to meet the Wizard for the first time, and seal her fate forever.

So many rips and tears patterned the material; so many different shades of raven black and chocolate brown and dark grey where she had attempted to mend it, so many trailing threads, mismatched buttons and strips of material sewn haphazardly together again and again, over and over each other to keep the outfit holding together…the dress was almost unrecognizable.

The black fabric clung frighteningly tight against her thin, skeletal body – the skirt was barely too short, but the top half strained noticeably against her chest. _Too_ noticeably.

It pained him to see how many times she obviously must have gone hungry to have become so shockingly thin. Even through the thick material, he could see every one of her ribs standing gauntly out from her torso in a way that made his heart clench with horror – not to mention worry for her health.

Her bony, yet surprisingly muscular-looking arms and long-fingered, lurid-green hands wrapped tight and protective like green spiders round the handle of the broomstick she carried, her hazelnut-coloured eyes narrowed in furious concentration as she assessed in turn each of the enemies she was up against; calculating his retinue's strength, gauging escape routes, glancing over the line blocking her one and only exit, each opponent separately, eyes moving from face to helmeted face until…

Until his eyes met the Wicked Witch of the West's for the first time in over two years of hunting.

The piercing, deep chocolate brown of her gaze was impossible to look away from. How could he possibly have forgotten those mesmerizing, hypnotic eyes; that unfathomable brown, dark with so many secrets, so much anger, so much determination, so much strength and intelligence and needle-sharp fury and rebeliance that had fuelled every split-second reaction, every baffling move, every easy escape and effortless aversion that just proved how incomparably more clever she was than him or any of his oh-so-important Gale Force, or even the Wonderful Wizard of Oz himself…

She was the Wicked Witch of the West. The most evil; the most terrible and most feared woman Oz had ever seen; the committer of the most unthinkably cruel deeds; the caster of so much horrific black magic; the abomination, the soulless, unfeeling, malicious cause of all this terror; everything sinful, everything inhuman, immoral – everything unquestionably, indisputably _wicked…_

And she took his breath away.


End file.
